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Intake of fiber and nuts during adolescence and incidence of proliferative benign breast disease

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Abstract

Objective

We examined the association between adolescent fiber intake and proliferative BBD, a marker of increased breast cancer risk, in the Nurses’ Health Study II.

Methods

Among 29,480 women who completed a high school diet questionnaire in 1998, 682 proliferative BBD cases were identified and confirmed by centralized pathology review between 1991 and 2001. Multivariate-adjusted Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

Results

Women in the highest quintile of adolescent fiber intake had a 25% lower risk of proliferative BBD (multivariate HR (95% CI): 0.75 (0.59, 0.96), p-trend = 0.01) than women in the lowest quintile. High school intake of nuts was also related to significantly reduced BBD risk. Women consuming ≥2 servings of nuts/week had a 36% lower risk (multivariate HR (95% CI): 0.64 (0.48, 0.85), p-trend < 0.01) than women consuming <1 serving/month. Results were essentially the same when the analysis was restricted to prospective cases (n = 142) diagnosed after return of the high school diet questionnaire.

Conclusions

These findings support the hypothesis that dietary intake of fiber and nuts during adolescence influences subsequent risk of breast disease and may suggest a viable means for breast cancer prevention.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health Public Health Service Grants CA046475, CA050385, and CA089393, and Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Dr. Graham Colditz is supported in part by American Cancer Society Cissy Hornung Clinical Research Professorship.

The work was performed at Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

We thank the Nurses’ Health Study II participants for their dedication to this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, 181 Longwood Avenue, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Xuefen Su, Rulla M. Tamimi, Eunyoung Cho, Laura Sampson, Walter C. Willett & Bernard A. Rosner

  2. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Xuefen Su, Rulla M. Tamimi, Heather J. Baer, Walter C. Willett & Graham A. Colditz

  3. Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Laura C. Collins, Stuart J. Schnitt & James L. Connolly

  4. Division of General Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Heather J. Baer

  5. Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Eunyoung Cho, Laura Sampson & Walter C. Willett

  6. Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Bernard A. Rosner

  7. Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center and Department of Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Graham A. Colditz

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  1. Xuefen Su
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  2. Rulla M. Tamimi
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  3. Laura C. Collins
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  4. Heather J. Baer
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  8. Stuart J. Schnitt
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  9. James L. Connolly
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  10. Bernard A. Rosner
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  11. Graham A. Colditz
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Correspondence to Rulla M. Tamimi.

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Su, X., Tamimi, R.M., Collins, L.C. et al. Intake of fiber and nuts during adolescence and incidence of proliferative benign breast disease. Cancer Causes Control 21, 1033–1046 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-010-9532-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-010-9532-7

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